Recollections
by Lady Maria
Summary: Joyce remembers her first lover only rarely.


Title: Recollections

Disclaimer: I do not own BtVS or Stargate. Other people do, like Joss Whedon and MGM.

Summary: Joyce has a secret, a secret shrouded by the past.

FFA: #287

Pairing: Joyce/Jack O'Neill

She remembers the past best during the holiday season. And moreover, Joyce remembers him best as he was when they were growing up. After all, they first met in kindergarten.

He was shy on the first day of kindergarten. If she hadn't thought boys had cooties, she might even have said he was cute. But by the time kindergarten ended, he had taken to dropping worms down the girls' dresses. Or shirts. Or whatever the female was wearing at the time. She thought he was a horrible monster then.

She didn't talk to him again until third grade; her family had moved to a different part of Chicago, and she went to a new school.

But when she transferred back into their old school, she found her best friend in the form of one eight year old Jack O'Neill. He was irresistible, wild and very quirky. And she was a tomboy, already an eight year old hellion. Mrs. Leary groaned the first time she sat on several dozen tacks. That was the very first prank they pulled together, and it was only the beginning of their continued relationship with the principal. They both ended up grounded that Christmas because they toilet papered both the girls' and boys' bathrooms from floor to ceiling.

In December of seventh grade, Jack asked her to the winter dance. He kind of shuffled his feet, turned beet red, and stammered out an incoherent sentence that she had to ask him to repeat. As her fingers dance over the picture of the two of them standing next to one another in the school gym, she recalls what had led to that.

"I can understand Latin, Greek, and mumble," Joyce 'Jay' Martin laughed. "But I can't make sense of stammer."

"I said," he sighed, "doyouwanttogotothedancewithme?"

"I can't make sense of that either." Jay glared at her best friend. "Care to slow it down, O'Neill?"

"Do you want to go to the dance with me?"

"Why not?"

And that was the beginning of a not-so-romantic courtship. They were each other's firsts, but they didn't share a romantic love. Or any real future, despite what their parents thought.

In eleventh grade, he started to notice her younger sister, Sara.

At the end of twelfth, he left for college and so did she. They officially broke up then, but every once in a while, they got lonely. It wasn't that odd to find them standing in front of the other's door, pretending valiantly that they were there for class notes. But their roommates knew differently.

After they both graduated, they knew they would part for good. They'd remain friends, but he was in the Air Force by that time. And she wasn't a tomboy anymore. She was a grown woman who needed to find her place in the world.

They had one last fling late one night, the night they went their separate ways.

Joyce stares at her wedding picture, taken not three months later. She doesn't show in it, although she knows Buffy suspects the secret concealed in this picture. You don't get married in early August and have a child nearly six months later.

She always contemplated telling Jack. And then he called to tell her he was getting married. Buffy was about four at the time.

For some reason, she found herself in his bed the night before the wedding. They knew it was wrong. Although she has to admit even now, that it was one hell of a Christmas present. Then the next day, the blushing bride said "I do" and Joyce smiled as she leaned into her own husband's embrace.

Sara wrote to her not three months later, completely panicked. She conceived during the honeymoon and didn't know what to do. Because she was the big sister, Joyce called Sara with simple advice. "Tell him. Jack always wanted children."

In her manufactured memories, the ones that are true now even though they never happened, Joyce remembers the flash of fear when Sara told her. She'd gone to the doctor that day and gotten the same news.

Joyce has two daughters. One was conceived on Christmas Eve, the other on Graduation night.

Neither knows their real father.

And she knows that she is dying. She wonders what Jack would say if she dialed his number right now and told him.

But she lost the number quite a while ago, after Charlie died and her sister divorced Jack. Besides, the time for telling is long past. Her girls will manage well enough on their own.

But she writes a letter to her childhood friend and former lover anyway and tucks it into her journal for safekeeping.

As she heads downstairs, still reminiscing on winters past, she never notices as it disappears. And somewhere in Colorado, a little grey alien hands it to the man it is addressed to.

A/N: Please review!!!!!!!!!!!!


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